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‘DIASPORA’ CAPITALISM AND ‘EXILE’ AS A
WAY OF LIFE: Some observations on the political and economic mobilization of
dispersed peoples By G. Pascal
Zachary I am sitting in
a San Francisco restaurant with MC, a Filipino historian from Manila. MC moved
here recently at the behest of community leaders who fear Filipinos are
forgetting their roots. MC teaches class at a community center in “Little
Manila,” in San Francisco’s “South of Market” neighborhood. MC is erudite and
eloquent on how Filipinos can manage to balance awareness of their homeland
with the seductions of integration into American society and the imperative to
do so. As we converse, he glances down repeatedly at a mobile phone in his lap.
We are talking, eating our meal and then suddenly he breaks off and says he
must go. Why, I ask? He hands me the silent phone and I read the message on the
screen: Go to the bank. “It’s from my
wife,” he says. “She’s been text-messaging me for the past hour. She needs
money.” Not surprising. What is surprising? His wife is in Manila. MC must go
to a bank and wire her money. Across the Bay
in Oakland, a month earlier, I am listening to Osita Osadebe sing in his Ibo
language at a private party for what the Ibo call a “social club.” Osadebe is
perhaps Nigeria's greatest bandleader. He has been turning out hits since the
1950s. Sort of the Count Basie of high-life. He makes deeply swinging music
that is always in style and writes lyrics about the most profound experiences
of his tribal group, the Ibo. These are the people who launched Africa's first
post-independence civil war. Biafra. A very bloody war, the first rock-star war
(Made famous by George Harrison holding a benefit concert for, yes, the
starving Biafran children). The Ibo lost, but rock stars gained a lasting
beacon: find the light of disintegrating African country and acclaim will
follow. The Ibo were left scattered around the world. Nigeria is going to
pieces and once more and the Ibo see an opening. There is a crypto-independence
movement among the Ibo now. And Osadebe, while not explicitly political, is the
troubadour of the Ibo. There are 20 million and they one of the great African
peoples. Achebe, author of the classic "Things fall Apart," is Ibo
and writes about his tribe in a recent book of essays, Home and Exile, based on
lectures at Harvard. The Ibo also
have perhaps the most fully formed diaspora among African peoples, because
their consciousness of exile was forged during the years after Biafra
collapsed. There are tens of thousands of Ibos in the U.S., with Houston, Los
Angeles and the Bay Area having large communities. Osadebe often tours these
exile communities and his latest album was recorded live at various
"social clubs." There are dozens scattered across the U.S.
Essentially they are meeting places. An Ibo group in Houston, say, rents a hall
for Osadebe to perform in and then only Ibo show up because his performance is
completely unpublicized. The Ibo are happy to hold a private show for
themselves, even though they know they could draw in additional paying
customers by advertising. Osadebe is eight
thousand miles from home, but within a few minutes from the club there is a
Catholic Church with an Ibo priest. The priest is one of the prime movers in
the community. Another is the man sitting across from me, a California state
bank examiner who in his spare time has organized an international Ibo social
club in which members from scores of countries are connected by email. He talks
of the need to preserve Ibo traditions among “my people” scattered around the
world. Another
restaurant, this one in Accra, the capital of Ghana. I am talking with PS, a
physical-education teacher and schoolboy soccer coach from Seattle who spends
each summer here. He owns two sporting goods stores. His stores sell the
flashiest, slickest sports equipment and apparel in the city. Only the well-off
can afford PS’s merchandize and his stores lose money. Each year PS covers his
losses, by bringing to Ghana thousands of dollars from his school district
paycheck. The money, which wouldn’t buy him much in the U.S., goes a long way
in Ghana. His stores employ the children of some of his favorite relatives. He
sponsors the uniforms of Accra’s soccer team. He has a sports radio show. In
short, PS is a big man in Accra. Is his business a business, or is it another
kind of social club? Another Ghana
story: OP is the traditional chief of one of Ghana’s most important tribal, or
ethnic, groups. Traditional chiefs were largely stripped of their power after
independence in 1957 by Ghana’s first president, Nkrumah. Along with many other
independence leaders in Africa, he saw “tribalism” as a threat to
nation-building and an inefficiency that no modern economy could afford.
Nkrumah broke the traditional chiefs, installing in a centralized state in
their place. But after his coup, the state broke down. Today, the state
provides few services, leaving many local needs unmet. Traditional chiefs,
seizing an opportunity, are reviving their institution by seeking to provide
local services. Since his ascension two years, OP has been in the forefront of
this movement. He was elected from a group of men with chiefly qualifications,
on the strength of his own experience in local government in New Jersey, where
he lived during the years of Ghana’s military rule. And finally,
Christmas Day in Ghana: I am listening to Ghana’s most popular singer, Koji
Antwi. Each year for the past 10 he has given a Christmas Eve performance at
the National Theater. The gig lasts for hours, into the morning, and this
Christmas Day, before the last encore, a special guest, climbs down with his
wife from the VIP boxes. President J.A. Kufuor. Elected 11 months earlier, he
is not known as a fervent high-life fan. He explains that he owes Antwi a debt:
During his campaign for the Presidency, when the dictator’s chosen successor,
appeared likely to win the election through superior finances, Antwi organized
a series of benefit concerts for him. Antwi’s support for Kufuor seems banal
until considering that he lives year-round in Switzerland, where he records his
albums. While married to a Swiss woman, Antwi is unknown in Europe, his
reputation resting solidly on his popularity in Ghana. His career represents a
new phase in diasporic culture. Once the diaspora happily consumed the culture
of the homeland. Now the diaspora produces “authentic” culture that is consumed
by the homeland and that defines the homelands aspirations: to live as an exile
with a diasporic consciousness. These diaspora
moments are snapshots that suggest the complexity of describing the mobility of
human communities. Life-reports and stories are important because official
statistics and survey data tell only part of the story. Demographers estimate
that no more than 200 million people live outside their countries of birth.
This number represents less than four percent of the world’s population.
Demographers ask why pay attention to such a small group of people? The answer
isn’t merely that the number is understated (though it must be since, after
all, nearly 30 million foreign-born people live in the U.S. and the wars of the
past decade have forced millions more people to leave their home countries).
People in exile have a greater effect than their numbers indicate. Communities
of dispersed people from the Jews of the 1940s to the Kosovars of 2000 have
influenced political events in ways belied by their size. A relatively small
number of ethnic Tamils, hailing from south India and Sri Lanka but living in
Western Europe, provided substantial funding to the armed insurrection against
the government of Sri Lanka by Tamils living in the country. People of Estonian
and Latvian descent in the U.S. played a pivotal role in these former Soviet
republics following their independence in 1991 and have helped the two Baltic
nations become part of the first group of ex-Eastern Bloc nations that are
expected to be admitted into the European Union over the next few years. And of
course Israelis in the U.S. (often holding joint citizenship) and people of
Irish descent have influenced in myriad ways the evolution of Israel and the
Irish republic, providing funds for development and international political
support. In general, the
political influence of dispersed communities has been the subject of much
study. In this paper I want to argue that dispersed communities have the
potential to influence economics and wealth-creation to a much greater degree
than generally considered likely. These diasporas also have the capability to
promote, in the case of developing countries, de-centralized, knowledge-based,
indigenous alternatives to the economic structures produced by the nexus of
finance capitalism, multinational corporations and multilateral global
institutions such as the World Bank. Specifically, I have two goals in this
paper. First, I want to sketch out a large opportunity that is usually ignored
by poor countries; this is how to take advantage of the talents, money and
energies of people from their country who have moved elsewhere, often to rich
countries. Second, I want to suggest some ways that politicians in wealthy
countries can address the fears of their electorates that the persistence of a
diasporic consciousness, among some portion of their society, will destablize
international relations or pose a threat to the multicultural/national-identity
reformation projects that most rich countries have embarked upon. In part I
will attempt to answer these questions by examining a particular dispersed
community, of Ghanian nationals living outside their country of origin. My
study of “overseas” Ghanaians provides a foundation, I hope, for a larger
theoretical and research effort. Taken together,
these two factors could positively change the dynamics of the political economy
of development by: (a) creating a
new mode of foreign assistance and investment: economic stimulus through
self-organizing diasporas networks spawned by civil society and the private
sector but legitimized and sustained by government and multilateral
institutions. (b) altering the
terms of trade in human talent, by encouraging “brain circulation” in addition
to brain drain. (c)
strengthening support in rich countries for continued and deepened ties between
ethnic communities in these countries and their countries of origin as a
matter, not only of human rights, but of economic and political significance. (d) creating a
recognition within poor countries that overseas communities deserve political,
economic and social means to maintain their links with their home country
including support by their home society and government for ongoing, albeit
episodic involvement of nationals who chiefly reside outside of the country. (e) helping
diasporas to play a more effective role in leveling the growing imbalance of
power between wealthy and poor nations. Political and
social policies aimed at harnessing or managing diaspora communities are in
their infancy. There are no multilateral agencies or international treaties
concerned with the peaceful, voluntary movement of people across borders, and
the subsequent transnational associations arising from these movements. Neither
the United States nor the European Union has no set of rules governing policies
towards diaspora communities, rather instead viewing these communities, if it
sees them at all, as atomized immigrants or, at most, as part of a national
exodus (so the Igbo becomes a Nigerian, the Aceh an Indonesian). But as the
power of the nation-state weakens, and as the power of diaspora communities
grows, the logic of incorporating these communities into theories and practices
of international relations and civil society grows as well. The ability of
an Igbo in California to plan, cooperate and act in concert with an Igbo in
Germany is insured only by the national laws of the respective countries. This
may be sufficient. But the time may come when an international agency, such as
a World Mobility Organization, may try to challenge those individual
governments who purposely exclude people who live abroad from the political,
social and economic processes of their origin nation. At the same time, efforts
at integration of immigrants in wealthy countries could become constrained, not
only by the demands and preferences not only of immigrants in the midst of a
country (say the Igbo in California) but that international law may give
standing to Igbo in Nigeria (or, even Germany) when it comes to contest the
preservation and amplification of Ibo customs in the U.S. The world, then,
could move towards a new kind of legitimacy for diasporas based not, as in the
past, on winning political independence or autonomy for an imagined homeland,
but as a reward for the economic and civic benefits that flow from a mobilized
diaspora. Not everyone
favors the political and economic mobilization of dispersed nationals. Diasporas
still worry many national elites. Until recently, Mexico maintained many
barriers to the fuller participation of its nationals living abroad, and
leaders in many poor countries remain baffled by the extent of their brain
drain from their own countries and what they can do about it. Nevertheless, a
growing number of countries seek to benefit from their diaspora communities and
show signs of being able to do so. In this paper, I want describe some of the
efforts by these countries; outline policy options; and identify research
priorities. Much empirical work remains to be done on dispersed communities and
the public policies designed either to promote or punish their activities. We
need to know more about the economic relations between homeland and overseas
members of a community and the extent to which new information and
communication technologies (ICT) enhance connections between exile and homeland
communities. We also need to understand better the tools available to
governments who wish to build closer ties with their diaspora communities. Strategies for
harnessing forces of the global diaspora should be at the center of efforts by
poor countries to jump-start development, and not on their margins, as they are
now. Part of the attraction of the role of dispersed communities in economic
development, to be sure, stems from the failure of bi-lateral and multi-lateral
assistance and direct investments from multinational corporations to stimulate
balanced growth. Neo-liberalism notched successes after the fall of the Iron
Curtain, but in many poor countries liberalization led to impoverishment of the
middle and lower classes and the global dispersal of the elite. Foreign aid, as
is well documented, has had perverse effects. Multinational investment is concentrated
in relatively few countries. The poorest countries, especially those in Africa,
receive virtually zero investment when dollars from resource exploitation are
backed out. Government austerity programs, forced on poor governments by the
burden of their debt load or the philosophy of neo-liberalism itself,
undermined human capital, weakening already weak educational and health
systems. Demographic change in rich countries, which resulted in smaller
workforce growth (or contraction), created incentives for employers in these
countries to hire the best and brightest of poor countries, paying a premium
for their services even over their own citizens. Thus, poor
countries were squeezed from two sides in the 1990s: (1) a combination of more
open trade, privatization of government services (and the imposition of “user
fees”) and a greater emphasis on free-market, private-sector forces brought
some advantages to poor countries, especially to elites, but also increased
insecurity of ordinary people (2) at the same time, a growing slice of the most
successful people in poor countries left for better opportunities in rich ones.
The result of these two forces was that in many poor countries there were few
or almost no winners from the economic approach known as “neo-liberalism.” The
biggest winners often left their home countries for jobs and permanent
residence in rich nations, while those winners who remained grew less connected
to their societies as new services (schools, hospitals and the like) and forms
of employment and enterprise sprung up that were open only to a small segment
of a society, the best educated and wealthiest. Despite the
current war on terror and the traumas to world trade of the sluggish growth or
contraction in many rich countries, the development situation is essentially
unchanged in 2002. Poor countries have sought to mitigate the drain of talent
by encouraging remittances from workers abroad; easing restrictions on dual
citizenship; and loudly urging successful people in the diaspora to return
home. Among elites in developing nations, the drain of talent is a mixed
blessing: Europe and the U.S. represent oceans of opportunity for their people,
and a single overseas success can support an entire family back home. Any crude
measures to limit educational or job opportunities abroad is deeply unpopular.
I can recall one morning when I listened to Abdoulaye Wade, President of
Senegal, declare that overseas Senegalese were crucial to his country’s
revival. He then appealed to his fellow citizens to return home, blithely
ignoring that seated next me was Wade’s daughter. One of his two children, she
lives in Paris. Her brother lives in London. Wade made no
mention of the contradiction and his daughter, at least, told me she wasn’t
coming home, not even for Daddy. Poor countries,
to be sure, have taken steps to at least attempt to minimize the adverse
effects of an outflow of talented people. India has used a variety of “soft
incentives” to encourage its citizens to return home, appealing to the
patriotism and benevolence of diaspora communities in the U.S. Many countries
have tried to “bond” their college graduates, demanding that they repay the
costs of their education if they leave for jobs in other countries. These
programs, however, are difficult to enforce and, besides, those who leave find
they can usually easily pay off their debt to their home government once they
land a high-wage job abroad. Taiwan and Korea, relatively wealthy countries
that are barely a generation removed from developing-world status, have offered
financial benefits to those technically-trained people who return. Truly poor
countries, of course, lack the means of essentially paying returnees a bonus
for their decision and instead must rely on moral exhortations, pleading with
talented people to stay home. Such appeals bring weak results. More effective
are diplomatic initiatives. When Britain’s National Health Service hired
planeloads of nurses from Jamaica and South Africa a few years ago, the
governments of both countries protested to the British government, which in
turn persuaded the NHS to end hiring from these countries. Poor countries also
have asked international professional organizations to oppose the expansion of
visa programs that allow wealthy countries to import skilled workers. At a
meeting of the international association of nurses last summer, for instance,
nursing leaders from several European countries agreed to try to persuade their
home governments to restrict the importation of nurses from poor countries. Poor nations
show signs of doing more than trying to stem the outflow of native talent and
to encourage the return of citizens working overseas. The leaders of poor
nations increasingly recognize that the forces propelling their citizens to
look for better opportunities elsewhere are not likely to abate and that the
ultimate tactic against “brain drain” is to create an attractive environment at
home. This will take some doing. In the meantime, poor nations are beginning to
realize that they must improve links with their national and ethnic diasporas.
They have come to this conclusion on their own, in a common-sense way, but also
from viewing the policies of certain wealthy nations that once exported large
numbers of people or still do. Rich countries, meanwhile, have actively
recruited highly-skilled workers from poor countries. Britain organized raids
on nurses and doctors from Africa and the Caribbean. Ireland has wooed Indian
software programmers. The U.S. doubled its H-1b program. At the same time, rich
countries sought to ease anxieties of highly-skilled immigrants, revising
domestic laws on permanent residency and attacking (often for the first time)
social exclusion and racial discrimination. These efforts are complicated by
9-11 and the quickening xenophobia in such countries as the U.S., which went
through a long period of relatively relaxed acceptance of immigrants. The
crackdown against immigrant groups that support foreign governments, while
limited to a few “outlaw” states, could spread to other diaspora communities. In the race to
attract global talent, countries play the diaspora card when they can. Faced
with skills and labor shortages in the 1990s, the government of Ireland turned
to recruiting from the hundreds of thousands of Irish nationals who left the
country in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, setting up job fairs in certain cities
in Britain, the U.S. and Australia that are known for their Irish enclaves. So
many Irish have returned to Ireland in recent years that networks have formed
to help them adjust. The government of Singapore keeps a registry of all its
overseas nationals, listing skills and educational backgrounds. When a
multinational considers making an investment in Singapore, the government may
provide a list of skilled people abroad available for recruitment. Multinational
corporations also are aware of how the origins of an employee may assist in
expanding business. For instance, corporations routinely send into China, India
and other parts of Asia employees born from the region in the hope of forging a
stronger tie between people of similar outlooks. It is harder for
poor countries to woo back their own talent if only because their living
conditions are less attractive than those in rich countries. Poor countries are
trying to overcome this. Consider the experience of Ghana. The new government
of J.A. Kufuor, in power after two decades in opposition, has made wooing the
diaspora a major priority, becoming the first sub-Saharan country to seize this
possible development tool. Last summer, the country staged what it called a “Homecoming
Summit” for the roughly one million Ghanaians who live outside the country
(note: some estimates put the number of overseas Ghanaians as high as 3
million, but if this figure is accurate at all it incorporates Ghanaians living
in African countries of Nigeria, Togo and South Africa. A few thousand
people returned to Accra for the meeting, which was attended by the entire
Cabinet and the President, J.A. Kufuor. The returnees asked for the enactment
of dual citizenship and better treatment of those who return and the government
asked for overseas Ghanaians to invest in their country. But in a
reminder of the difficulties in attracting the diaspora, hundreds of people on
their way to the conference arrived late when Ghana’s national airline
cancelled flights without warning. Returning Ghanaians are often startled by
what they face at home, having been spoiled by the ease of service in Europe
and the U.S. A popular comedian in Accra has a solo act, “the Saga of the
Returning Ghanaian,” in which he parodies the experiences of returnees and the
attitudes of natives towards them. The frustrations are many. DA, an
immigration lawyer from Los Angeles, serves as an adviser (without pay) to
Kufuor. He and his wife, both born, raised and educated in Ghana, were staunch
critics of Rawlings, during his 20-year rule, and both eagerly returned when
Kufuor took power early last year. In anticipation of an influx of the diaspora
onto his staff, Kufuor had pushed through a change in the country’s law,
exempting his volunteers from paying a duty on imported personal goods. But
because of political sensitivity surrounding Kufuor’s reliance on the diaspora
for his pool of advisers, DA worries about unwanted press reports if he
actually doesn’t pay the duty. Yet at the same time he bristles that he can’t
afford the duty, which will run into thousands of dollars. Despite
frustrations, Ghanaians do quickly enter the flow of the country, helped by the
ability that the Internet gives them to read local newspapers and listen to
local radio. A few are making a difference in Ghana, though usually by keeping
one foot in their adopted country and one foot in their homeland. Look at the
roots-and-wings experience of KA, a leading Ghanaian businessman who splits his
time between Accra and Los Angeles. KA attended university in California in the
1970s and remained in the U.S. following a succession of military coups that
resulted in the dictatorship of Jerry Rawlings. When in 1992, Rawlings suddenly
decided to call an election, and stand for the presidency, KA responded by
declaring his candidacy. KA campaigned throughout the country, because election
law required that he have an organization in each province. Drawing pressure from
Rawlings, KA ultimately abandoned his candidacy when he realized that, as a
U.S. citizen, he was barred from running. Rawlings won the
election, and after a decent interval KA returned, this time with a business
proposition: Western Union. In the early 1990s, Western Union, the largest
broker in cash remittances, didn’t even bother to offer services to West
African and East African countries. KA persuaded the company’s chief executive
to let him set up operations in Ghana and other sub-Saharan countries,
arranging with local banks to act as transfer agents. The effort succeeded.
Western Union has scores of offices in Ghana today, and hundreds across Africa.
Last year, the company shipped $150 million into Ghana and more than $500
million into Nigeria. KA’s role was
critical in making this happen, Western Union says, which highlights the way in
which a motivated diaspora member can overcome hurdles that would stymie a
person less passionate about a place. An association
called the Ghana Cyber Group wants to do the same, only on a larger scale. Held
together by e-mail and a Web site, GCG is a cyber-investment club, open to the
Ghanaian diaspora, whose goal is to direct investment into Ghana, drawing on
overseas Ghanaian money. The group, which is closely tied to the current
government, seeks to replicate what members of the Lebanese diaspora have done
for years in West Africa and Ghana, in particular: raise “family” money to fund
high-profit businesses. People of
Lebanese descent play a large role in the Ghanaian economy, dominating the
formal retail trade, manufacturing and import-export. Lebanese business
involvement in Ghana stretches back a century, and many Lebanese consider
themselves proud Ghanaians. Using global networks, Lebanese in Ghana raise
money for grocery stores, light manufacturing and other businesses that can
reap high profits in Africa for those who know the terrain and the risks. Curiously, Ghana’s
new government while passionate about the need to draw black Ghanaians from the
diaspora into the mix of economic policy and practice has ignored the potential
leverage to be gained from reaching out to the Lebanese community. No Lebanese
serves as an adviser to the President and, despite the evident relevance of the
Lebanese model to the Ghanaian situation, no civil society figure has ever
raised in public the possibility of drawing on Lebanese expertise in a
systematic way. Yet the
capitalist energies of diaspora communities are essential to a country such as
Ghana, which is largely bypassed by multinational corporations. Paradoxically,
leaders of global corporations cite the lack of diaspora investment as a reason
to avoid the country. One American executive, whose company has invested in
Ghana, says: “If Ghanaians living outside the country don’t have confidence to
invest in their own country, why should we?” Investment is a
sticky issue, of course. Non-economic reasons often dominate when an overseas
national puts cash into his home country. His mother may need regular support,
in the form of cash payments, or he may want to purchase a house to use in his
retirement. Productive investment from the diaspora, notwithstanding KA’s
example, remains relatively rare. For years, Ghana’s government seemed to
prefer the investment dollars of strangers on the assumption that their own
people living abroad couldn’t possibly have enough funds or know enough to
contribute. Ghana still offers no preferences to overseas nationals trying to
invest at home. For Ghana to
succeed in wooing its one million nationals around the world, the government
may need to take more dramatic steps than simply rolling out the welcome mat.
While a “welcome back” message is preferable to presumptions of returnee
disloyalty (or even subversion), the government of Ghana still lacks a
conceptual and legal framework in which to integrate the energies of its
diaspora into a program of renewal. The “Homecoming Summit,” while notable, has
led nowhere, partly because of weak follow-up and partly because Ghana’s
government lacks plans to convert its enthusiastic diaspora into an energetic
contributor. Rather curiously, neither the World Bank, nor the IMF, nor any of
the dozens of international assistance agencies in Ghana has ever seen fit to
attempt to harness diaspora talents. The failure of
foreign donors to perceive the value in a mobilized Ghanaian diaspora is part
of a larger failure on the part of development thinkers to examine ways in
which the cultural “glue” that holds together transnational communities can
also serve to promote economic activity. Part of the reason for this oversight
may stem from the common presumption that diasporas are parasitic in their
economic behavior. Consider the role of the Lebanese (or people of Lebanese
descent) in Ghana. Invited into West Africa by the British about 100 years ago,
the Lebanese gained control of major parts of the import-export, retail and
manufacturing sectors. De-colonization proved a setback for Lebanese
aspirations, as newly independent African states forced out the Lebanese.
Within a decade, some returned at the behest of Africans and then others came
because of Lebanon’s bloody civil war. By the late 1990s, most of the leading
businessmen in Ghana were of Lebanese extraction. Of the Lebanese elite, most
held Ghanaian passports and some married Ghanaian spouses. The parallels
with Ghana’s own diaspora proved elusive, however. Where overseas Ghanaians
rarely invested in productive activities in their home country (choosing
instead to send remittances that were immediately consumed), the
Lebanese-Ghanaians not only re-invested profits in Ghana but encouraged
Lebanese from around the world to do the same. By 2001, the Lebanese community
in Accra had swollen into the low thousands, bulked up by Lebanese fleeing
Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia and other war-torn countries. The community
was now large enough to support a Beirut-Accra flight. Yet despite the
revival of the Lebanese community, and the absence of overt resistance to
Lebanese business success, Ghana’s black policymakers and business elite failed
to recognize the lessons for their own diaspora and for their inspired effort
to mobilize the one million overseas Ghanaians on behalf of Ghana. In all the
public discussions over tapping its diaspora, Kufuor’s government has never
included a single Lebanese. Neither has the World Bank, which supports a major
development program in Ghana, ever looked at the role of the Lebanese in the
Ghanaian economy. It is as if the very importance of Lebanese diaspora to Ghana’s
economy stands as a rebuke to the country. And yet, if Ghana’s own black
diaspora is to be mobilized, policies and practices must be adopted that, to
some extent, replicate the Lebanese experience in Ghana. Ghanaians living
abroad are intrigued by the possibility of acting collectively to promote
business in Ghana. One overseas group, the Ghana Cyber Club, is trying to
launch a fund (from money pooled by its members) that would invest in
businesses in Ghana. Poor countries
have an excuse for their sorry performance in mobilizing diaspora communities:
they may have chased away the most talented members of the diaspora through
political repression and dismal economic conditions. Or these countries may be
overwhelmed by the continuing outflow of trained (and untrained people) from
their land and lack the resources to respond to the diaspora challenge. And of
course, most poor countries are besieged by crises, making reactive policies
the norm. But poor nations
can proactively respond to the existence of growing diaspora communities by
taking the following steps: 1) create a
national agency to provide assistance to overseas citizens in keeping abreast
of changes in their home country and adjusting to life there should they return
to live or work. The national agency would also be responsible for promoting
the use of ICT as a means of forging stronger ties between the homeland and its
dispersed communities. 2) create a
registry of skills possessed by members of a nation’s overseas community. Data
could be assembled by an independent NGO, using electronic survey forms, and
shared with domestic and international employers. Government could
go further by creating an “internal Peace Corps,” bringing skilled volunteers
to their country, by drawing on retired or philanthropic-minded overseas
nationals. Since poor nations rely heavily on foreign volunteers for a variety
of tasks, the use of members of the diaspora community in this role would
enhance self-reliance. 3) Endorse the
creation of a non-partisan, independent NGO that studies the uses of
remittances and seeks to direct the flow of these funds toward productive uses
(as opposed to consumption to maintain living standards). 4) Endorse the
creation of a private, independent business investment fund, whose resources
would be drawn from the diaspora community. The diaspora fund would seek to
earn a profit, but would presumably rely on a different compass than
multinational corporations. Of course, many diaspora groups (notably Asian
ones) informally pool investment capital for this purpose. However, such
practices are virtually unknown in sub-Saharan Africa, so a formal program
could provide an important role model for others to follow informally. 5) Legalize dual
citizenship. While many Latin American and Caribbean countries allow dual
citizenship, many Asian and African countries do not, creating a large legal
barrier to participation by members of its overseas community who often are
citizens of other countries. Once dual citizenship is allowed, governments can
go further by providing voting rights to overseas nationals. Wealthy nations
need new policies on dispersed communities too. Wealthy nations ought to
recognize the possibilities inherent in diaspora communities, since these
communities often benefit wealthy nations by their presence. And yet wealthy
countries and the elite multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, that
often coordinate the developed world’s response to global issues have failed to
incorporate an understanding of diaspora communities into their own aid and
development programs. There are no empirical studies on this topic, but a
cursory examination of Germany’s foreign-aid effort reveals that the country
makes no use of its large Ghanaian population (perhaps 50,000) in its
substantial aid program to Ghana. The same observation applies to the U.S. To
be sure, aid programs should not be handed over wholesale to diaspora groups,
but isn’t it logical that people born in a country but now living elsewhere
might have some special knowledge that could be leveraged? To be sure,
international relations are a main reason why rich nations keep a distance from
diaspora groups. Rich countries often don’t want to embarrass the political and
business elites of poor countries by reminding them of the people they’ve lost
(and diaspora groups often oppose the current government in their home land).
Rich countries also are hungry for the talented people in poor countries. The
government of Britain might be persuaded to place a ban on recruitment of doctors
and nurses from Ghana, but it is inconceivable that it would promote the return
to Ghana or even the systematic involvement in Ghana from a distance of the
more than 100,000 Ghanaians living in Britain. Wealthy
countries also worry that their diaspora communities, if supported, will get up
to no good politically. Without glossing over the debate over whether diaspora
communities are any more prone to political violence and subversion than any
other community, diaspora groups have supported violent movements in the past.
Rich countries are often uncomfortable providing a safe haven for these
diaspora energies (though often they do, as in the case of the anti-Castro
Cuban community in the U.S.) Finally, rich
nations whether they have long traditions of absorbing immigrants or not are
preoccupied with “integration,” or at least accommodation, of newcomers to
their territory. In the U.S., where the term “hyphenated American” sits
comfortably with images of super-patriotism, people who align themselves too strongly
with transnational communities remain suspect. With the exception of the
interaction of Jewish Americans with Israel and anti-Castroites and Cuba, the
U.S. government tends to frown on the long-term political projects between
residents of the U.S. and their homelands. Diasporas are fine in the
subterranean, but when allowed into the open these transnational affiliations
sometimes not to a nation but rather a tribal group (the Pashtun, as opposed to
the Afghan; the Ibo, as opposed to the Nigerian) they appear to pose a threat
to the national unity of the wealthy nation. In my book, The Global Me, I argue
why this is not so and why, when governments in rich countries allow diasporic
consciousness among immigrants to surface, these governments end up promoting
national unity, not undermining it, for the logical reason that people who are
allowed to have their cake (life in America) and eat it too (free associations
with Ibos around the world) are grateful and make for better citizens. I won’t repeat my
argument except to suggest, as others have, that the concept of diaspora has
universal applicability. The main features of diaspora a sense of exile, a need
to construct a new community in a strange land, the ability to draw on global
resources to do so sound striking like the main features of post-modern life
and, more specifically, of contemporary American life and, increasingly, of
life in western Europe. Now this is not
an academic point. If we are all members of the diaspora now -- or we can at
least plausibly argue this -- policy makers have a wider range of choices open
to them in dealing with new diasporas in their political jurisdictions because
they may be able to construct a domestic constituency for their policies based
on appealing to the "diasporic outlook" of voters. If policymakers
in wealthy nations paid more attention to diasporas for the reasons above, they
could fashion a set of policies that would draw on diaspora energies as a means
of accelerating economic development in poor countries, advancing global
equity. These policies would flow out of a new ethos of migration and
immigration: a belief in a lifelong connection between dispersed communities
and their homelands. Note on sources:
This paper is based on interviews and field research I conducted in the Bay
Area, Ghana and elsewhere. I also draw on ideas and examples from my book, The
Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge (2000). |
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